PITTSBURG -- At first, it appeared to be a dramatic tale of self-defense: A man confronted an armed burglar he found in his apartment Tuesday morning, wrestled with him and killed him with a knife.

But in a bizarre twist, police on Wednesday revealed it wasn't a random burglary at all. Instead, they said, a cheating wife and her lover staged the break-in to intimidate her estranged husband into moving out.

Now, the wife, her lover and two accomplices are behind bars on suspicion of murder. A 54-year-old local transient -- the uncle of the woman's boyfriend -- is dead.

When her husband found out, the two decided to split up, and he was supposed to move out of the apartment, Raman said.

But Taijeron believed her husband "was not going to move out," Raman said. So Taijeron and Parker cooked up a fake home-invasion robbery to scare her husband into leaving their home at the Villa Serena Apartments on East Leland Lane, police said.

The husband, who was not identified by police, told investigators he was home alone at 10:20 a.m. Tuesday. When he heard what he thought was someone trying to break in through the front door, he ran to the back of the apartment to get a gun.

When he returned, he encountered the would-be burglar, identified as Robert Earl Lindsey, holding what the husband believed was a gun, though it turned out to be a toy.

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The two men struggled, the husband told police, and both men dropped their weapons. But the husband grabbed a knife and, as the two continued to struggle, he stabbed Lindsey in the back, police said.

The husband wasn't arrested and won't face charges, Raman said.

Pittsburg police say Lindsey, 54, who died at the scene, was a transient with an "extensive" criminal history of multiple burglaries.